Scent, In Silico

Once a primal instinct, olfaction is now being mapped, measured, and modeled by machines.

Making the Vortex Mixer

Ella Watkins-Dulaney

The forgotten story of an invention found in every biology lab.

A Brief History of Xenopus

From early experiments on fertility and embryonic development to becoming the first cloned eukaryote from an adult cell, Xenopus frogs have had an outsized influence on the life sciences.

What It's Like To Be A Worm

Ralph Stefan Weir

Finding evidence of “sentience” is fraught, whether in a comatose patient, an animal, or a neural net.

Building Brains on a Computer

A roadmap for brain emulation models at the human scale.

Solving the Electroporation Bottleneck

Cultivarium, a focused research organization, has built a custom electroporator to engineer non-model organisms at scale.

Why Do Research Institutes Often Look the Same?

Samuel Arbesman

Despite attempts at variation, many new research organizations are canalized into just a handful of forms.